SEI Board of Visitors Member Barry Boehm Honored

June 15, 2015 • Article

June 15, 2015—SEI Board of Visitors member Barry Boehm was recently honored with the Nancy Mead Award for Excellence in Software Engineering Education at the 2015 Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T). The award, named for SEI Fellow and founding CSEE&T Steering Committee Chair Nancy Mead, is presented to an individual who has demonstrated outstanding contributions to software engineering education and training, as well as to software engineering professionalism.

Mike Barker, current Chair of the CSEE&T Steering Committee, noted Boehm’s outstanding contributions as an educator in the field of software engineering economics. He also cited Boehm’s recent work on the BKCASE system engineering body of knowledge and on the 2009 Graduate Software Engineering Reference Curriculum guidance. Boehm has made significant contributions in software economics and software process models; authored texts and papers widely used in software engineering education; and earned many awards for his contributions.

“I first encountered Barry’s work as a software practitioner, when his book on software engineering economics served as a handbook for those of us in the field,” said Mead. “Later on, as an educator, he carved out an equally distinguished second career, introducing the ‘continual software engineering experiments classroom’ in which real-client course projects are a laboratory in which Masters and PhD students perform experiments for their research. This approach not only benefits researchers and provides greater educational opportunities for students but also provides continual improvement for the course and for software engineering education in general.”

Teaching approaches and materials developed by Boehm have been widely adopted, including those specific to

cost estimation and cost estimation modeling

software risk management

stakeholder management

assessment of development methodology

Boehm is TRW Professor of Software Engineering and Director, Center for Software Engineering, University of Southern California. He has served as Director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency Information Science and Technology Office, and as Director of the Defense Research and Engineering Software and Computer Technology Office. Boehm served at TRW from 1973 to 1989, culminating his career there as Chief Scientist of the Defense Systems Group. Prior to TRW, Boehm served at the RAND Corporation from 1959 to 1973, culminating as Head of the Information Sciences Department. Boehm began his career as a Programmer-Analyst at General Dynamics between 1955 and 1959.